Last 3 months headlines – Page 1232
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UK right not to adopt EU justice measure, Lords committee says
European Union laws setting minimum rights for defendants and victims are in the interests of British citizens, but the government was right not to sign up to a Lisbon treaty proposal guaranteeing suspects access to a lawyer, a committee of peers has said. The Lords Justice ...
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Victim of a market-rigging cartel: watch this space
Competition regulators across Europe often rely on whistleblowers to uncover anti-competitive cartels. Often the whistleblowers are the cartelists themselves. But what happens when the self-incriminating statements are then required to be disclosed to the victims of the cartel to support claims for compensation? Since a decision of Europe’s highest court ...
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Mesothelioma U-turn is a pyrrhic victory
Journalists are sometimes accused of misquoting people (not me, you understand, just in case Lord Justice Leveson is reading). So let me give Jonathan Djanogly an opportunity to be quoted in full, without amendments. Here is the justice minister, speaking in the House of Commons, on ...
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‘Raise cap’ on crime victims’ compensation
Personal injury lawyers have called on the government to raise the cap on compensation for victims of crime. A Ministry of Justice consultation, ‘Getting it right for victims and witnesses’, closed this week after three months. The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers responded to the consultation ...
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Ken and Co live it up
Highlighting free hospitality and schmoozing enjoyed by ministers is a cheap journalistic shot, which is why Obiter is happy to indulge. This month saw the latest quarterly list published by the Ministry of Justice of ministerial gifts, hospitality, overseas travel and meetings. Sadly, the figures go ...
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Calls for a global legal profession are fanciful
There has been talk in recent years, at conferences or in committee discussions within international legal organisations, about the need for a global legal profession. Harvard Law School has been the latest to climb on the band-wagon with a mid-April conference on the subject.
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Pole position
The things lawyers do to get their books in the news. Paul Tweed, of Belfast and London firm Johnsons, persuaded a client, the ultra runner Richard Donovan, to read his latest work Privacy and Libel Law: the Clash with Press Freedom at the North Pole. (Tweed represented Donovan in a ...
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Brighton rock
What’s pink, can have an ‘adverse effect on activity and attention’ and has the Council of Europe running all the way through it? No, it’s not justice secretary Kenneth Clarke. It’s a stick of Brighton rock, compliments of the Ministry of Justice. The MoJ ordered 500 customised sticks of rock ...
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Exit wound
It seems the insurance industry can get into Downing Street no problem - but exits are a little more tricky. Nick Starling, director of the Association of British Insurers, must have been happy to have survived an hour in the presence of claimant lawyers. Indeed, ...
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Judges can and should be involved in pro bono
I have heard it said that judges cannot get involved in pro bono work. On the contrary, I can think of many and various ways in which judges might get involved. And, in fact, a good number are already doing so.
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Competition reform could boost collective litigation
Government proposals to reform competition law, making it easier to bring class actions against firms in breach, could ‘fuel’ claims and ‘create a new business in collective litigation’, the Confederation of British Industry has warned. A consultation published this week by the Department for Business, Innovation ...
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LASPO bound for statute book after cliffhanger final vote
The government’s controversial legal aid reforms are set to become law after it won its final battle over the bill in the House of Lords yesterday. Peers had inflicted 14 defeats on the government in votes on proposed amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment ...
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Long con artist’s sinking feeling
It is 150 years since Lady Tichborne, who never accepted that her son Roger had died when his sailing ship sank somewhere between Jamaica and Rio de Janeiro in 1854, began a newspaper campaign to find her lost boy.
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Police interviewing loophole must be tackled urgently
by Robin Murray, a criminal solicitor and founding partner at Kent firm Robin Murray & Co We thought the offer of access to free and independent legal advice to suspects, prior to police questioning, was automatic under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) codes. ...
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CCRC criticisms were grossly unfair
by Richard Foster, chair of the CCRC The Gazette article about the Criminal Cases Review Commission was both biased and inaccurate.
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Immigration
Deportation - Exclusion of immigrant deemed to be conducive to public good RS (Uganda) v Secretary of State for the Home Department: Court of Appeal, Civil Division (Lord Justices Rix, Etherton and Patten): 1 December 2011 ...
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Immigration
Child - Asylum seeker claiming to be a child R (on the application of W) v Croydon London Borough Council and another: Queen's Bench Division, Administrative Court (London) (CMG Ockelton sitting as a deputy judge of the High ...
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All power to GCHQ
Home Office plans to widen the powers of intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to access communications data without judicial scrutiny have provoked strong reactions. But what is the content of the new law and how does it compare to the current situation in respect of the exercise of regulatory ...